New Game Releases

Young Justice: Legacy will be available for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and 3DS.

NHL 14 will be available for the Xbox 360, PS3.

Puppeteer will be available for the PS3.

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX will be available for the PS3.

The Sims 3: Movie Stuff will be available for the PC.

Dragon Fantasy Book II will be available for the PS Vita.

Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs will be available for the PC.

Metro Last Light will be available for the MAC and UNIX.

Sanctum 2 will be available for the PS3.

Wednesday, September 11th

Mario and Luigi Dream Team will be available for the 3DS.

DuckTales Remastered will be available for the Xbox 360.

Thursday, September 12th

Card Hunter will be available for the PC WEB.

Aarklash Legacy will be available for the PC.

Arma III will be available for the PC.

Friday, September 13th

Puppeteer will be available (in UK) for the PS3.

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX will be available (in UK) for the PS3.

Word Chum will be available for the iPhone.

Empire: Total War – Gold Edition will be available for the MAC.

The King of Fighters XIII – Steam Edition will be available for the PC.

Legend of Dungeon will be available for the PC.

Volgarr The Viking will be available for the PC.

Europa Universalis IV will be available for the PC.

Payday 2 will be available for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

Phineas and Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff will be available for the Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, NDS, and 3DS.

Rune Factory 4 will be available for the 3DS.

Call of Duty: Strike Team

Coming to iOS

An all new Call of Duty game was recently released by Activision for mobile and tablet devices. The game is titled Call of Duty: Strike Team and is available on iOS for $7. It is a first and third person game that is “built from the ground up” for the mobile devices.

The game lets you fully customize your squad’s load outs and abilities before entering into combat in “diverse gameplay environments.” It will also let you switch between first-person and top-down third-person perspectives to allow you to tactically coordinate the actions for your squads.

Call of Duty: Strike Team is set in the year 2020 when “tensions run high amongst the world’s superpowers.” Following a surprise attack, the United States gets involved in a war with an “unknown enemy.” You need to lead a Joint Special Operations team in a “global effort” to find those who were responsible for the attack.

The game features a Campaign mode which will take you around the world, and a Survival mode which has you fighting off waves of increasingly difficult enemies.

The game is only compatible with iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad mini, iPad 2, and the 3rd, 4th and 5th generation iPad and iPod Touch. It also requires iOS 6.0 or newer. There has been no mention of the game coming available for Android or Windows devices.

Irrational Games Lay-offs

BioShock Infinite development team effected

Eight employees from Irrational Games, who brought us BioShock Infinite, were recently layed off in effort to streamline the company. The layoffs should have no effect on the development of BiShock Infinites two-part Burial at Sea DLC that should be coming out soon.

An Irrational Games representative confirmed the layoffs saying, “In an effort to streamline our processes I am sad to confirm that we let go a total of eight employees today. Any studio’s greatest asset is the group of people that make up the whole, and as such it was extremely hard to make this decision and there is never a good time for this to happen. As co-workers and friends, we wish them the very best.”

The two-part DLC is set in the original BioShock’s Rapture and will be released next year. It is expected that the content will tie the story of Elizabeth and Booker together.

Xbox 360 Support

Continuing for a while

Xbox 360 fans will be happy to know that Microsoft has no intention of abandoning the console any time soon. Yusuf Mehdi, chief marketing and strategy officer, stated that the platform will be supported through 2016 at least. “If you look at [Xbox 360], that platform lasted for seven to eight years and it’s going to go for another three years. It’s incredibly profitable now in the tail.”

Mehdi also stated the Microsoft intends on shipping over 100 new games for the 360. “We are going to continue to invest in Xbox 360 and the two devices can work in concert. So it isn’t like the day we ship the Xbox One your [Xbox 360] won’t work. We will continue to support it. In fact, we’re going to ship over one hundred new games on Xbox 360. So you’ll be able to still play your games, just not on the same exact box.”

According to Microsoft, the $500 price tag for the Xbox One is a “very good deal.” The next-gen console will launch on November 22nd.

Rayman Legends

PS Vita patch

Ubisoft recently announced that Rayman Legends, for the PS Vita, will be getting a patch that will add the missing Invasion Mode levels.

Gary Steinman, Ubisoft’s communications manager, stated that “Due to a longer development time than expected, we couldn’t initially include the Invasion Mode–essentially, a second take on existing Rayman Legends maps–in the Vita version of the game. However, we can confirm that the Invasion Mode will be added via a free patch, at a later date.”

When the game launched last week in North America, several gamers complained that the content found in other versions wasn’t on the PS Vita version of the game. The U.K. launch was recently delayed, but you European gamers can expect Rayman Legends to launch for the PS Vita on September 13th.

Beyond: Two Souls

Demo out soon

On October 1st in North America, Sony intends to release a demo of Beyond: Two Souls by developer Quantic Dream. The demo will release in Europe the following day, Oct. 2nd. Sony says “This will be the first chance for most to go hands-on and experience the improvements Quantic Dream has made to Heavy Rain’s control scheme.”

There will be two levels included in the demo, the first takes place at the beginning of the game where you get involved in an experiment at the Department of Paranormal Activities. The second level takes place later in the game where the protagonist is trying to escape government agents.

According to Quantic Dream, you will be able to control the game through iOS and Android devices, however, they did not give any indication if this feature would be part of the demo.

Beyond: Two Souls will launch on October 8th in North America and October 11th in Europe for the PS3.

Disney Infinity meets BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite level coming to Infinity

An all new user-generated level for Disney Infinity’s Toy Box mode has melded together BioShock Infinite and Disney Infinity in what is called Toy Columbia. According to Disney Interactive, the latest batch of add-on content features five worlds based on BioShock Infinite, Tron, Up, and a couple of others.

Toy Columbia features a cartoon version of BioShock Infinite’s floating city including the Sky-Line rails. The world featuring Up naturally includes Carl’s floating home complete with its collection of balloons. Trench Run is the Tron set world where you need to pilot a Tron Recognizer through a trench. There is another world modeled after the real-world Disney park attraction titled Jungle Cruise, and one titled Sky Gauntlet which offers gamers platforming challenges while navigating a maze in Blue Breakout.

The five Toy Box maps are free to download for the Xbox 360, PS3, and the Wii U. Its important to note that these levels were created by the community, not the developer Avalanche Software.

Backwards Compatible Xbox One

Could happen some day

Recently Microsoft suggested that there is a strong possibility that one day the Xbox One will be backwards compatible as a result of its Azure cloud servers.

Albert Penello, Microsoft’s senior director, confirms that there is a wealth of functions that the cloud can be used for, however, Microsoft hasn’t yet decided on which function they want to explore. Penello responded to questioning about the cloud and backwards compatibility saying, “Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the things that makes [the cloud] at the same time both totally interesting and hard to describe to people. Because what the cloud can do is sort of hard to pin. When you say to the customer, we want the box to be connected, we want developers to know that the cloud is there. We’re really not trying to make up some phony thing. We just have to figure out how, over time, how much does that cost to deliver, how good is the experience.”

Penello went on to explain, “But there are so many things that the servers can do. Using our Azure cloud servers, sometimes it’s things like voice processing. It could be more complicated things like rendering full games like a Gaikai and delivering it to the box. We just have to figure out how, over time, how much does that cost to deliver, how good is the experience.”

Sony too has suggested earlier that it plans to use Gaikai’s streaming technology to make backwards compatibility available for the PS4 at some point. However, neither the Xbox One or the PS4 will support backwards compatibility in the beginning. While this means that the Xbox 360 and PS3 discs won’t work in the new consoles, don’t toss them aside as you may just get to use them in the next gen consoles at some point.